Chain of Fools

CURT, UMBRAGE, KNEED, EEL, DORKY, RIPRAP

I said, "Is 'riprap' a clue or a response?"

"Neither, exactly," Timmy said. "But it got me a triple-letter score. That was the response I felt like expressing at the time."

"Which was not following the agreed-upon rules of the game," Dale said. "When he played that word, Timothy was not keeping his word- as usual."

Timmy frowned deeply as Dale spelled out "pimp."

I left them and walked outside across the broad back lawn, aromatic and abuzz with bees, to the herb garden. Ruth Osborne had placed a low flat basket on the ground beside the spot where she was bending over. The basket contained eight perfect sun-ripened tomatoes that must have come from the vegetable garden in the southeast corner of the yard. Mrs. Osborne had snipped off a small bunch of basil sprigs, and their perfume in the heat of the late afternoon was strong and transporting. Scientists who know the geography of the human brain say the olfactory and memory centers are located next to each other, and that's why smells can trigger such powerful memories. Basil set off a welter of memories for me, all of them good. Among them were my grandmother's vegetable garden in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and beside her herb patch a hidden pathway through the brush down to the banks of the Delaware River. Then it was on to lunches with Timmy at our pensione in Fiesoli, and on and on in a fraction of a second.

"Smells wonderful," I said.

Mrs. Osborne straightened up slowly and said, "This is the season I'll miss when I'm dead. It isn't even a season-just a week or two in August when the tomatoes are at their peak and the basil hasn't begun to wilt and the local corn is sweetest. What luck it is for a person to be up and around and conscious in Edensburg in August!"

I said, "It's one of the times of the year when we remember why we live in this part of the country."

"Oh, I live in Edensburg because I came back here and married Tom Osborne," she said, "instead of marrying one of the boys from Yale who came up to Mount Holyoke on weekends. If I'd married Ogden Winsted of Philadelphia, I'd have gone off with him to darkest Chestnut Hill and never been heard of again. Or if I'd accepted Lew McAl-ister's proposal of marriage, I'd probably still be in the Cameroons shining Christ's light on the heathen. Either locale would have left me a long way from Edensburg.

"There were other offers, too, some of them worth considering. But

I loved Tom Osborne from the time he was a sixth-grade… 'patrol boy' was what the school crossing guards were called back then, and I was a frightened first grader, and Tom held my hand every day when I crossed Third Street on the way to Stuyvesant Grammar.

"I adored Tom and felt safe and secure with him, and although much later, of course, I had to set him straight on a few matters-he could be dumb as a post when it came to what he used to call 'the female of the species'-still, I never in all our fifty-nine years together stopped leaning on Tom or looking up to him. You know, Mr. Donaldson, I was just thinking: Tom had asked that his ashes be scattered in the mountains, and I was too selfish to let the kids do that. Even though Tom is now just bits and pieces of bone and whatnot, I drew comfort from having what's left of him around. But now I've come up with another idea. Why not spread Tom's remains around in the herb garden? That way he'd be out in the weather, which is what he wanted. At the same time, I could visit him-and I do use that term loosely-and I could continue to be reassured by Tom's nearby presence, however irrational that may seem to others. What do you think?"

I said, "I don't know. Is that legal?"

"Oh, do you suppose it might not be?"

"Just to be on the safe side, maybe you should consult an attorney, Mrs. Osborne. And an agronomist."

"I suppose I ought to."

"As a precaution."

"You don't hear of people," she said, "being hauled into court for- what would the charge be? If it's on your own property it wouldn't be littering. And I don't believe there's any hazard to public health-the cremation fire surely would eliminate any risk of bacteriological contamination. What would any legal objection possibly be based on?"

She had me there. I said, "It won't hurt to ask. You might learn something neither of us knew."

She looked doubtful and unconvinced. "It's nothing I need to worry about today," she said. "Today we've all got more immediate concerns. How is your investigation progressing, Mr. Donaldson? Have you accumulated enough evidence yet to have Chester charged with fratricide?"

"I am making progress, Mrs. Osborne, but I'm still short on any evidence a prosecutor could use in making a case that would stand up in court. As for Chester's being a murderer, I don't know about that."

"Well, I sure as the devil know about it Just you keep digging, and it's Chester you'll get the goods on. I know my son." This was said not with irony, so far as I could tell, but with some weird combination of clinical detachment and maternal conviction.

I said, "Chester has a reputation for violent explosions of temper, Mrs. Osborne, but has he ever been calculating in his violent acts? As far as I've been able to determine, premeditation doesn't seem to be his style."

"He was always sly," she said thoughtfully "And I hate to say it, but frequently untruthful too."

"Scheming in business, or even family matters, is one thing," I said. "But my question to you is, on those occasions in his life when Chester actually hurt people, did it ever seem planned?"

"No, it always seemed to erupt out of nowhere And I'm sure, Mr. Samuelson, that when you get to the bottom of it, you'll find that that's what happened with Chester and Eric. Eric refused to change his vote on selling the Herald to Harry Griscomb, and then Chester blew up at Eric, and this time he murdered him " She looked pained but not horrified, as if fratricide were a difficult matter that the Osbornes had to contend with, the way another family might have to face a child born out of wedlock or a scandal involving the personal use of PTA funds.

"But why," I asked, "would Chester and Eric be discussing Herald business affairs on a hiking trail miles from town? Is Chester a hiker?"

"Sometimes he used to be," she said "All the Osbornes are naturalists. Even June was as a child."

"Did Eric and Chester go hiking together-in recent years, as adults?"

"I wouldn't think so. I'd be awfully surprised."

I said, "You're not the only member of your family, Mrs. Osborne, who believes that Chester murdered Eric. But the more I think about it, the more trouble I have imagining the two of them meeting in the woods by chance and an argument ensuing during which Chester loses control and bludgeons Eric, who dies. Nor can I imagine Chester the hothead plotting to follow Eric nearly a mile into the woods, where he sneaks up on Eric and pounds him with a weapon he's carried along from home. Both are out of character. Either is possible, but I think unlikely."

Mrs. Osborne was due in court in three days to answer a charge of having gone soft in the head, but on that Friday afternoon in her herb garden she looked alert and her reactions to what I told her suggested full comprehension-even though she couldn't seem to get my name right. She said, "But why else would Chester say what he said to me about somebody else having to get hurt in order to keep the Herald out of Harry Griscomb's hands?"

"It's possible," I said, "that this was just Chester blowing off steam- losing his temper with you and blurting out something he knew would hurt you and frighten you. Doing that would be in character for Chester."

Looking bewildered, she said, "Then you don't think it's Chester who's plotting to change the makeup of the Herald board and prevent the sale to Harry Griscomb?"

I told her I was not prepared to absolve Chester of anythingmaybe not even Eric's murder-but that I thought a broader, more complex conspiracy was under way. I said I believed some members of the conspiracy were unaware of the activities of other members of the conspiracy, and that it was probable only one or possibly two conspirators were behind Eric's murder and the more recent attempts on Janet's and Dan's lives. Without mentioning Craig Osborne and the diamond robbery and Dan's alleged criminal activities on behalf of saving the Herald, I told Mrs. Osborne that she should be prepared in the coming days for a number of revelations about Osborne family members that might shock and disappoint her.

She listened with interest to all of this, and said, "You've got quite a lurid imagination, Mr. Donaldson. My curiosity is certainly piqued. But I've found that the truest answers to hard questions tend to be the simplest ones. I hope you aren't being led astray by the fact that most of us Osbornes are, to one extent or another, nuts. It would be a pity if you were thrown off by Osborne looniness."

I asked her which Osbornes were the loony ones I should be careful not to be misled by, and she had a good laugh over that.